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Originally Posted by jwb
so if I understand your point about seed money there are in fact other avenues to get it potentially if you have a business model that you expect to make a lot of money. A lot of these start ups rely on various types of investors.
Honestly the kind of money that someone like Zuckerberg or Bill gates goes on to amass is so absurd that it's virtually guaranteed for any given person that's probably not going to happen for you. Like you mentioned Zuckerberg went to Harvard as did Gates. As prestigious as that does sound, the median income for a Harvard undergrad is only like 80k. The trajectory that guys like Zuckerberg were on at that age was far from typical even among the most privileged trust fund group of people.
Didn't the owner of Walmart start as a single general store? There's your dad's restatement example right there. It could be the start of a retail empire or it could be just a quaint local fixture. Obviously the latter is vastly more likely. Which gets back to my original statement that the actual difference between the two is in fact just their level of success.
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Alright let's just break this down whether you're a member of the English monied people in the 1700s or 1800s vs. whether you're an American monied person in the same timeline to give an idea of the opportunity open to people and how a frontier can make a serious difference in the amount of capital necessary to build generational wealth.
Say you're a person of wealth with seed money but not top crust and looking to build your fortune in England at this time. By this time England's economy is already well built up and if you want to build an empire of selling wheat or potatoes then you're going to be competing with hundreds or even thousands of years of entrenched business practices without much space to grow cause people have been cornering the England market for a long time. like there just isn't
So the most obvious solution is to take your seed money to the frontiers of the empire, Africa or Asia or wherever where markets aren't as established and where seed money can make a bigger impact and the possibilities are more endless. But these frontiers are far far away and require great amounts of startup capital to account for the distance.
Now say you're an American with the same seed money. The frontier is on your doorstep, the government is big on quick expansion and offering pennies on the dollar on acres of land because they're trying to settle a frontier that is seemingly endless and right ****ing there. For far cheaper value than an English venture capitalist you can obtain vast tracts of land/capital to build wealth because the frontier is relatively close and able to repopulate and therefore more valuable.
You have two groups of people with potentially equal amounts of wealth and drive, but the latter simply has more opportunity to accumulate wealth.
Flash forward to now and comparing different income brackets in America and their access to the current economic frontier (whether it be finance or the internet or whatever). Seemingly different circumstances since we're not comparing at least potentially equal wealth within different societies but the similarity is comparing different access to frontiers of wealth.
If you are someone with wealth to finance the creation of Amazon or whatever the **** does it god damn matter if an enemy can open a general store?